IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter

Vol. 60, No. 3, September 2010 Editor: Tracey Ho ISSN 1045-2362 Editorial committee: Helmut Bölcskei, Giuseppe Caire, Meir Feder, Joerg Kliewer, Anand Sarwate, and Andy Singer

Annual IT Awards Announced

The principal annual awards of G. Fink Prize Paper Award, the the Information Theory Society 2003, and the 2004 Joint IT/ were announced at the 2010 COM Societies Paper Award, ISIT, in Austin. The 2011 Shan- and the 2007 Information Theo- non Award goes to Shlomo Sh- ry Society Paper Award. He has amai. The 2010 Wyner Award served as Associate Editor for goes to Toby Berger. The win- the Shannon Theory of the IEEE ner of the 2010 IT Paper Award Transactions on Information is the 2009 IT Transactions pa- Theory and served on the Board per on Polar Codes by Erdal of Governors of the Information Arikan. The winner of the 2010 Theory Society. He will give the Joint IT/ComSoc Paper Award Shannon Lecture at the 2011 ISIT is the 2008 IT Transactions pa- Shlomo Shamai Toby Berger in Saint Petersburg, Russia. per on coding for errors and erasures, by Ralf Koetter and Frank Kschischang. Five stu- The Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award recog- dent authors of ISIT papers received the 2010 ISIT Student nizes an “individual who has shown outstanding leader- Paper Award: Yury Polyanskiy of Princeton, Jayadev Acharya ship in, and provided longstanding exceptional service to, of UCSD, Yashodhan Kanoria of Stanford, Arya Mazumdar the information theory community.” Toby Berger, Professor of University of Maryland and Benjamin Kelly of Cornell. with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer- Finally, the 2010 Chapter of the Year Award was presented to ing University of Virginia, has served in every major role of the Russia Chapter. the IT Society, including President (1979), Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions (1987–1989) and General Co-Chair of The Claude E. Shannon Award, awarded for “consistent and the 1977 ISIT in Ithaka, NY. profound contributions to the field of information theory,” is the highest honor of the IT Society. Shlomo Shamai joined the The Information Theory Society Paper Award is given annu- Department of Electrical Engineering at Technion in 1986, where ally to an outstanding publication in the fields of interest to he is now the William Fondiller Professor of Telecommunica- the Society appearing anywhere during the preceding two tions. He has co-authored over 170 journal papers. His research calendar years. The winners of the 2010 award is “Channel Po- interests encompass a wide spectrum of topics in information larization: A Method for Constructing Capacity-Achieving Codes theory and statistical communications. He is especially inter- for Symmetric Binary-Input Memoryless Channels”, by E. Ari- ested in theoretical limits in communication with practical con- kan, which appeared in the July 2009 IEEE Transactions on straints, multi-user information theory and spread spectrum Information Theory. This paper introduces a new phenom- systems, multiple-input-multiple-output communications sys- enon termed Channel Polarization and introduces a particular tems, information theoretic models for wireless networks and recursive construction of codes, namely, Polar Codes, that systems, information theoretic aspects of magnetic recording, exploits channel polarization through a successive decoding channel coding, combined modulation and coding, turbo codes algorithm. It shows that these codes and their matching de- and LDPC, in channel, source, and combined source-channel ap- coding algorithm achieve the capacity of any binary memory- plications, iterative detection and decoding algorithms, coherent less symmetric channel with decoding complexity O(n log(n)). and noncoherent detection and information theoretic aspects of Arikan’s paper has already spurred a very significant amount digital communication in optical channels. Dr. Shamai (Shitz) is of research on Polar Codes and applications thereof. an IEEE Fellow and a member of the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI). He is the recipient of the 1999 van der Pol Gold Medal of URSI, and a co-recipient of the 2000 IEEE Donald continued on page 3 2 From the Editor Tracey Ho

Dear IT Society members, Issue Deadline December 2010 October 10, 2010 The highlight of this issue is the announce- March 2011 January 10, 2010 ment of the annual IT Society awards. June 2011 April 10, 2010 Warmest congratulations to the award winners for all your achievements! This issue is also the first under the newly formed Please submit ASCII, LaTeX or Word source files; do not editorial committee. There are exciting ar- worry about fonts or layout as this will be taken care of ticles in the pipeline for upcoming issues, by IEEE layout specialists. Electronic photos and graphics so stay tuned. should be in high resolution and sent as separate files.

As a reminder, announcements, news and I look forward to your contributions and suggestions for fu- events intended for both the printed news- ture issues of the newsletter. letter and the website, such as award announcements, calls for nominations and Tracey Ho upcoming conferences, can be submitted jointly at the IT Society website http:// www.itsoc.org/, using the quick links “Share News” and “Announce an Event”. Articles and columns that do not fall into the above categories should be e-mailed to me at [email protected], with a subject line that includes the words “IT newsletter”. The deadlines for the next few issues are:

IEEE Table of Contents Information Theory Annual IT Awards Announced ...... 1 Society Newsletter From the Editor ...... 2 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter (USPS 360-350) is published quarterly by the President’s Column ...... 3 Information Theory Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. The Historian’s Column ...... 4 Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, Golomb’s Puzzle Column: Seating Arrangements ...... 5 New York, NY 10016-5997. Cost is $1.00 per member per year (included Golomb’s Puzzle Column: Infinite Sequences With Bounded in Society fee) for each member of the Overlap Solutions ...... 7 Information Theory Society. Printed in the U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors Meeting...... 8 NY and at additional mailing offices. Event Report: Broadcast Channel Summit ...... 11 Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, First IEEE African Winter School on Information Theory and IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Communications ...... 12 © 2010 IEEE. Information contained in this 2010 International Symposium on Network Coding (NetCod 2010) ...... 13 newsletter may be copied without permission provided that the copies are not made or dis- Conference Calendar ...... 16 tributed for direct commercial advantage, and the title of the publication and its date appear. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/ whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 3 President’s Column Frank R. Kschischang

I have just returned from beautiful sunny Austin, lists of committees and their membership, infor- Texas, where an enthusiastic team headed up by mation for authors, reviewers, conference orga- Benhaam Aazhang and Costas Georghiades organizers, and much more. nized a fantastic Symposium on Information Theory. As usual, the Symposium featured an outstanding Of particular note and potential interest to all infor- technical program (organized by Michael Gastpar, mation theorists is the rapidly-expanding body of Robert Heath, and Krishna Narayanan), with stim- material filed online under the general heading of ulating plenary talks from Michael Jordan, Abbas “Resources” (www.itsoc.org/resources). Here the El Gamal, Tony Ephremides, and Ram Zamir. The Online Committee has gathered pointers to various highlight of the Symposium was the Shannon Lec- materials; for example, textbooks in information ture, entitled “Musing upon Information Theory,” theory and related fields, lecture notes and review and delivered by Te Sun Han. The Symposium once articles, and even a few recent (and not-so-recent) again featured a number of events organized by the doctoral dissertations. Members of the commu- Student Committee, including Round Table Research nity are strongly encouraged to contribute to this Discussions and a Panel Discussion on “Recipes for a Good Talk,” growing archive. For example, to post a link to a PhD dissertation, and the WithITS organized a very interesting event entitled “Yes, She a member would simply need to register for an account, log in, and Can.” I am already looking forward with eager anticipation to next then from the “Dissertations” page fill out a brief form accessed via year’s Symposium, to be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia. the “add new…” drop-down menu feature.

— e — If you happened to miss the Shannon lecture or a plenary lecture from this year’s ISIT, or, indeed, from any of the ISITs since 2006, The Information Theory Society has an amazing web site (www.itsoc. you may be pleased to know that these have been recorded on org). If you haven’t browsed there in a while, I would strongly en- video and are available to be downloaded by following the links courage you to do so. More than merely a “web site,” our web system from the “Media” page. Also of interest are lecture material and is built on a powerful and flexible content management system called videos from the 2008 and 2009 Schools of Information Theory. Plone, with Society-specific customizations implemented by Six Feet Up, Inc., all specified and developed under the watchful eye of the You may also wish to catch up with the activities of your local Chap- Society’s Online Committee. Although many have contributed, the ter—simply follow the links from www.itsoc.org/people/chapters. visionary who convinced the Society’s Board of Governors to invest Chapter chairs are encouraged to use their itsoc.org web space to in this project, and who has led the development effort since its in- keep their members informed of all upcoming and ongoing events. ception, is Online Editor Nick Laneman. Without Nick’s outstanding leadership and stewardship, it is doubtful that we would have the It is my hope that our online web pages will grow into an invalu- cutting-edge online system that we have today. able resource for all members of our community, and I invite your contributions. If you point your web browser at www.itsoc.org, you will find all of the latest Society news, information about upcoming events As always, if you would like to get more involved in the activities (workshops, conferences, symposia), awards and honors, an ar- of the Society or share your comments, please contact me at frank@ chive of recent newsletters, the Society’s bylaws and constitution, comm.utoronto.ca.

Annual IT Awards Announced continued from page 1

The Joint Information Theory and Communications Society The ISIT Student Paper Award is given annually to one or more Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in any outstanding papers in that year’s IEEE International Symposium publication of the Communications Society or the Information on Information Theory for which a student (or students) is the pri- Theory Society during the previous calendar year. The winner mary author, and is also the presenter of the paper. The winners of the 2010 award is “Coding for errors and erasures in random of this year’s awards are “Variable-length coding with feedback in the network coding,” by R. Kotter and F. Kschischang, which ap- non-asymptotic regime,’’ by Yury Polyanskiy with H. Vincent Poor peared in the August 2008 IEEE Transactions on Information and Sergio Verdu, “On Reconstructing a Sequence from its Subsequence Theory. This paper provides a fresh perspective on network Compositions,” by Jayadev Acharya with Hirakendu Das, Olgica coding, viewing codewords as linear subspaces, and develops a Milenkovic, Alon Orlitsky, Shengjun Pan, “On the deletion channel new coding theory for this channel model by proposing highly with small deletion probability,’’ by Yashodhan Kanoria with Andrea original algebraic code constructions over the Grassmanian Montanari, “Codes in Permutations and Error Correction for Rank Mod- manifold. The coding methods revealed in this paper may have ulation,” by Arya Mazumdar with Alexander Barg and “Universal strong theoretical and practical impact and the paper is already Hypothesis Testing in the Learning-Limited Regime,” by Benjamin Kelly highly cited. with Thitidej Tularak, Aaron Wagner and Pramod Viswanath.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 4 The Historian’s Column Anthony Ephremides

Often, the volunteers, who end up chairing our Symposia or gov- that Italians describe as “Nero comme erning the Society, start early in more “humble” roles, like chairs il Diavolo, Caldo comme l’Inferno, for local arrangements, publicity, finances, etc. These are all im- Dolce comme l’Amore” (translated as portant, useful, and educational positions that provide a taste of “Black like the Devil, Hot like Hell, and managerial responsibilities. Not everyone is inclined to undertake Sweet like Love”). He told me in no such roles. Those who do are attracted by the social “urge” to uncertain terms that the “real McCoy” serve the community and interact with (and learn from) their col- was to be found in a particular café in leagues. And they can have some real fun! downtown Trieste and gave me loose directions to it. The next day I was on As I am currently deeply engaged with the organization of the 2011 my way to Trieste on a mission. I arrived at the central square and ISIT in St. Petersburg, I reminisced about my first involvement with tried to follow Pino’s instructions. I was lost quickly in a maze of an ISIT, which was as Treasurer of the 1979 Symposium in Grignano, narrow streets and alleys. All of a sudden there was a “whiff” in the Italy, which is a small village near Trieste in Northeastern Italy un- air that carried the unmistakable imprint of intense coffee aroma. der the shadow of the (then called Yugoslavian and now Croatian) It faded away as suddenly as it had arrived. And then, there it was Alps. I was lured to this position by my, then, department chair again. As the wind gusted from around the corner, the smell would (none other than Lee Davisson) who was also the ISIT co-chair. I come in strong. So, I started chasing that smell pretty much the same was naturally qualified, being at the time Society Treasurer as well. way a hound follows the scent of the fox. The smell started becom- ing stronger and more frequent as I was snorting my way through Thus, a beautiful adventure began. The other co-chair of the Sym- the alleys. Coffee’s strong smell always promises a devastating fla- posium was Giuseppe (Pino) Longo, who has long given up In- vor that it rarely delivers. So, it adds to the desire to sample and see formation Theory and become a prominent novel writer, radio whether that warm nose of roasted dark hues in the air would recre- commentator, and all-manner busybody of local intellectual life in ate the sensation on the palate. I kept coming closer until … there Northern Italy. He is a wonderful (and colorful) individual and a it was. A crowded little bar with people standing at the counter and good friend of both Lee and myself. swallowing the black nectar in a single gulp and then exiting into the chilled air outside. In Italy everyone drinks their coffee at the bar. As As Symposium treasurer I had the responsibility of putting the bud- they say “sit at the table and your finances go unstable; stand by the get together and stopped twice (on my way to Greece) in Grignano to bar and your money goes far”! I ordered a “doppio con panna”, that check things out and estimate costs. The setting of the village is beau- is, an industrial strength cup of syrupy liquid with a dollop of heavy tiful right on the Adriatic sea. The hotel was modest by today’s stan- whipped cream. After an intoxicating couple of seconds of untold dards and I observed that the size of the bathroom soaps was minus- pleasure, it was over. Yet, the flavor lingered on the taste buds for cule (a fact that proved to be a major source of complaints during the almost half an hour. That residual sensation was the pay-off from the Symposium). The proximity to the Iron Curtain (or, more accurately, rare encounter with the best of arabicas. the porous “Aluminum” curtain between Italy and , then, Yugoslavia) made it a rather lonely and quiet place. Neighboring Trieste, however, But … back to reality. I was there as the treasurer and had busi- was (and is) a vibrant and picturesque town only 9 kilometers to the ness to attend to in Grignano. We went over the menus and the op- North. It is a cultural and historic hub for the region, replete with at- tions with the event manager at the hotel and calculated the costs. tractions of all sorts, but especially in the culinary area. In those days, convention food, especially in Italy, did not have to be rubber chicken with green beans and rice. Those who attended the One of my visits was in February of 1979 just as the June dates of 1979 event must remember that the banquet and the overall food of- the Symposium were looming closer. One evening, Pino took me to ferings (including the coffee breaks) were of unparalleled quality. a “joint” (rather than a restaurant) that anticipated the future waves The symposium was a great success. The Shannon Lecturer was of “fusion” cuisine. It had injected Italian flare into the Austro- Jacob Wolfowitz and there were for the first time papers of “net- Hungarian heritage. There were steaming pots in which Veal and working” flavor presented at an ISIT. There are always unexpected Pork were being boiled. Moisture was lining the show windows and events. In Grignano’s case one of the unexpected events was the the plate included a cornucopia of tender cuts and bones, sizzling non-delivery of … the expected! In those days there were no CD’s, pieces of redolent meat falling off the bones, and mustard sauces USB’s or electronic mail. So, several hundred copies of the published that blended perfectly with the local Friuli wines. The warmth of book of abstracts had to be delivered in time for distribution to the the atmosphere and the camaraderie amongst the patrons was a participants at registration. Well, they were stuck at the Malpensa source of good cheer for all that made everyone just linger, chat, airport in Milan about 300 km away due to one of the strikes by and sip into the evening hours of the cold day. Before calling it off, some workers union (an almost daily event in Italy then). we had a “shot” of Averna, that unique bitter Italian “digestif”. The remedy was a quick (and expensive) decision by Lee (with my But there was another experience that toppled that. At that time it concurrence regarding affordability) to dispatch a taxi to Milan to was really difficult to find good espresso coffee outside Italy. The pick up the booklets from customs and bring them to Grignano Starbuck generation may be offended but the “Lattes” and the the same day. “Frappucinos” of the popular chain are to Italian coffee products (especially of that era) what formica tabletops are to fine mahog- Mulling over these memories, I realized that these “lowly” sup- any. So I was confessing to Pino my infatuation with the beverage port activities can be a source of great fun.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 5

GOLOMB’S PUZZLE COLUMNTM Seating Arrangements Solomon W. Golomb

Suppose we have a circular table with n 1 1 equally spaced seats, and we have n 1 1 people, conve- niently labeled 0, 1, 2, … , n, and suppose n $ 2.

In n consecutive rounds of seating, each of the people will have n neighbors on their right, and n neighbors on their left. We will call a seating arrangement “perfect” if it seats n + 1 people in n rounds in such a way that each person has every other person on their right exactly once, and on their left exactly once.

Here is an example of a perfect seating arrangement with 7 people in 6 rounds. Each row is a round, and is to be considered cyclically. For convenience, I have placed “person 0” at the left end of each row (so cyclically, also at the right end) and the other n people are permuted in a different way in each round.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 2 4 1 6 3 5 0 3 1 5 2 6 4 0 4 6 2 5 1 3 0 5 3 6 1 4 2 0 6 5 4 3 2 1

Note that, ignoring the “all-zeroes” column at the left, what remains is a 6 3 6 Latin square (in this example).

Note also, in this example, the bottom three rows (ignoring the 0’s) are the left-right mirror images of the top three rows (in reverse order). Hence, if we used only the top three rows (including the 0’s), we could seat the seven people in only 3 rounds in such a way that every person has every other person as a neighbor (either to the left or to the right) exactly once. When n is even, and we can seat n + 1 people in n/2 rounds so that each person has every other person as a neighbor (either left or right) exactly once, we call such a seating arrangement ideal. Now here are your questions.

1) For what values of n $ 2 do perfect seating arrangements for n 1 1 people exist?

2) In particular, is there a perfect seating arrangement for 8 people (n 5 7)?

3) When the n rows are listed, as in the above example, for a perfect seating with n 1 1 people, and we ignore the “all zeroes” column, is the n 3 n array that remains always a Latin square? (In a Latin square, the columns as well as the rows must be permutations of the numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . , n.)

4) Show that an ideal seating arrangement, with n 1 1 people in n/2 rounds, can always be found if n 1 1 is prime, n $ 2.

5) Can there ever be an ideal seating arrangement, for n 1 1 people in n/2 round, if n 1 1 is not prime?

6) In particular, does an ideal seating arrangement with 9 people exist?

7) For a perfect seating arrangement, with n 1 1 5 7 people, how many perfect seating arrangements (by completing the table

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 6

for the six rounds of seatings) exist?

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 6

8) For a perfect seating arrangement with n 1 1 5 8 people, how many perfect seating arrangements (by completing the table

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 6 0 7

for seven rounds of seatings) exist (if any!)?

Note that existence requires only an example, while non-existence requires either a proof or an exhaustive search. (Answering problems 7. and 8. will almost certainly require computer searches.)

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 7

GOLOMB’S PUZZLE COLUMNTM Infinite Sequences With Bounded Overlap Solutions Solomon W. Golomb

1) Here is one uncountably infinite subfamily G of the family F of all infinite subsequences of the positive integers, such that

for every pair of sequences S1 and S2 in G, the intersection S1 d S2 is finite.

For each real number x [ 1/2, 1 , take the infinite binary expansion of x : x 5 0.1a2 a3 a4 c where each a : i . 1, is either 0 or 1. Associate with x the sequence of positive integers (in ordinary binary notation) 1, 1a2, 1a2a3, 1a2a3a4, c. If 3 2 y [ 1/2, 1 with y 2 x and y 5 0.1b2b3b4 c, then the sequence for y : 1, 1b2, 1b2b3, 1b2b3b4, c, cannot agree with the sequence for x from the first k where ak 2 bk onward; so the two sequences will agree on only their first k 2 1 terms, a finite3 number.2 (It is well-known that the set of points on 1/2, 1 is uncountably infinite. The fact that certain rational values r [ 1/2, 1 have two binary expansions, e.g. 3/4 5 0.110000 c 5 0.101111 c, merely increases the number of sequences in G, by a countable infinity of additional examples.)3 2 3 2

2) Examples of sequence pairs A 5 ai and B 5 bi for which CAB t is finite for all t, 2` , t , 1`, are given in the solutions below to Problem 3 and Problem 4. 5 6 5 6 1 2

3) With f1 5 f2 5 1, fk11 5 fk 1 fk21 for all k $ 2 (the Fibonacci sequence) let A 5 f2n for all n $ 1, and B 5 f2n21 for all n $ 1, the even and the odd Fibonacci terms, respectively. The “difference set” for A, all integers f b 2 f a for b . a . 0, 5 6 2 2 5 6 namely 2, 5, 7, 13, 18, 20, 34, 47, 52, 54, c , is disjoint from the “difference set” for B, all integers f2b21 2 f2a21 for b . a . 1, namely 1, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 21, 29, 32, 33, c . Hence CAB t # 1 for all t, 2` , t , 1`. 5 6 5 3 6 1 2 4) Let A 5 aj for all j $ 1 be defined by aj 5 2j ! , and let P 5 pj 5 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, c be the sequence of the prime numbers. For any integer t, 2` , t , 1t, the sequence A 1 t cannot contain more than |t| primes; so CAP t # |t| for all t [5 Z6 . Specifically: i) at t 5 0, A contains11 no2 2 primes; ii) at t5 56 1 1,5 since x3 1 1 5 x 161 x2 2 x 1 1 , A 1 1 contains no primes; iii) at t 5 21, since x3 2 1 5 x 2 1 x2 1 x 1 1 , A 2 1 contains only the one prime 23 2 1 5 7; and1 2 iv) for |t| . 1, A 1 t 5 2j ! 3 1 t is divisible by |t|, and hence composite, for all j $ |t|. 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 11 2 2 5) If a sequence A exists for which CAP t , K for all t [ Z, where P is the set of prime numbers, and K is any finite bound (however large, but independent of t), then the famous “prime k-tuples conjecture” would be false. Finding such a sequence A, or proving that no such1 sequence2 A can exist, would be a major accomplishment.

Notes, References and Acknowledgements

1) Questions 4 and 5 were posed by me in Problem 10208, American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 99, 1992, p. 266. I also supplied the solution given here to Question 4, and the observation about the “prime k-tuples conjecture” (which asserts that the set of k integers n 1 0, n 1 a2, n 1 a3, c, n 1 ak will be simultaneously prime for infinitely many values of n, provided that a1 5 0, a2, a3, c, ak do not fill up a complete residue system modulo p for any prime p).

2) The Fibonacci example in the solution to Problem 3 was one of several examples that resulted from a discussion with John H. Conway and Neil J.A. Sloane at Gathering for Gardner 9, Atlanta, GA, March, 2010.

3) The possibility that there could be a sequence A satisfying the requirement in Question 5 is termed “Golomb’s Conjecture” in The Little Book of Bigger Primes, Second Edition, by P. Ribenboim, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2004, pp. 202–203.

4) My formulation of these problems in terms of crosscorrelation was inspired by a conversation with Peter Sarnak in January, 2010.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 8 IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors Meeting January 31, 2010 La Jolla, CA Aria Nosratinia

Attendees: Daniel Costello, David Forney, Rolf Johannesson, Frank returns $538K, net 2009 operating surplus $100K, reserves at Kschischang, Aria Nosratinia, Abbas El Gamal, Martin Bossert, end of 2009 $2.3M. The Society reserves-to-expenses ratio is Muriel Médard, Kenneth Zeger, Michelle Effros, Li Peng, Gerhard 1.3, well above the IEEE minimum of 0.5. The IEEE has rein- Kramer, Nihar Jindal, Alexander Barg, Andrea Goldsmith, Hans- stated the option of allowing Societies to spend up to 50% of Andrea Loeliger, Paul Siegel, Bruce Hajek, Syed Jafar, Giuseppe their previous year’s surplus, which increases our flexibility. Caire, Christina Fragouli, Emina Soljanin, Elza Erkip, Alexander Vardy, Anand Sarwate. Print subscriptions are trending downwards. Our two sources of print subscriptions are: institutions that sub- The meeting was called to order at 13:30 hours by the Society Pres- scribe only to print at the non-member rate of $1,075, yield- ident Frank Kschischang, who greeted the members of the board. ing $200K/year, and institutions that subscribe to a package 1) The agenda was approved by consent, including the min- including print with IEEExplore. Many of the latter institu- utes of the previous BoG meeting in Taormina. tions are cutting print subscriptions.

2) The President presented his report, with the following out- Another concern is conference publication revenue. Changes line: The society is in good shape. Our system with its shift- in the IEEE formula for revenue-sharing will begin to be register of officers works well and gives us institutional implemented in 2010, and we expect to lose $120K per year. memory. The financial health of the society is good and improving. Our journal is strong. Conferences and work- Possible new revenue sources for the Society include elimi- shops are strong. We lead IEEE in services provided for our nation of the subsidy for members who receive print copies student members. The online committee has done a fabulous of the Transactions. The annual cost is $100, but members job, and our web page is arguably superior to that of any other are charged only $45. A formal proposal for eliminating this Society in the IEEE, although it is not utilized to the fullest subsidy will be presented at the next BoG meeting. A pos- extent. In the President’s column (in the Society Newsletter), sible source of revenue is to introduce tutorial papers and I mention that our society is unique in its collegiality. A total magazine-like articles in the Transactions, but the financial of 88 volunteers either serve as associate editors or on com- model would need to be investigated. Finally, another mittees. The President thanked all these volunteers. potential source of greater revenue is conferences.

What should we focus on this year? Our Transactions, In summary: after large losses in 2008, investment gains in although technically strong, is not without problems. At the 2009 have improved our reserves, but long-term concerns last TAB meeting, a prominent person from the Signal still exist, especially for publication revenue. Processing Society commented that he had negative experi- ences in submitting papers to our Transactions, and as a 4) The Second Vice President, Muriel Médard, presented the result discourages his students from submitting to our report of the Membership and Chapters Committee (MCC). Transactions. That is a serious comment that we should try Current members of the committee are Sae-Young Chung, to address. The sub-to-pub time increased last year, despite Max Costa, Michelle Effros, Uri Erez, Stephen Hanly, all our efforts, from 92 weeks to 99 weeks. Without a major Gerhard Kramer, Amin Shokrollahi, Rüdiger Urbanke, cultural shift in our Society, this cannot be fixed, and we Han Vinck, Raymond Yeung, Lizhong Zheng, as well as may lose excellent papers as a result. Andrea Goldsmith start- Emina Soljanin. ed an initiative during her presidency to address the sub-to- pub time, and the current President will continue to work The formation of the IEEE Tainan Section Information on this issue. Our planned transition to ScholarOne is one Theory Society Chapter was announced. step in the right direction. This is only an administrative change, however, and may not by itself be enough to solve The IT Society sponsors the Padovani Lecture in the the problem. We will try to focus the attention of the Society Summer School, and also a separate Distinguished Lecturer on this issue and address it in creative ways. program, which is just getting under way. The first Padovani Lecturer was Abbas El Gamal. The next Padovani Lecturer The other issue to focus in the coming year is to increase the will be Jack Wolf. The donation by Robert Padovani of $10K usefulness of our online web pages. will eventually run out; if we think this is a worthwhile endeavor, then we might want to raise funds for it for the The current President thanked the previous President, long run. The formal description of the Padovani Lecture Andrea Goldsmith, for her services to the Society. was presented to the BoG (available in the MCC report).

3) The Treasurer’s report was presented by the IT Treasurer, The current set of Distinguished Lecturers consists of Amin Nihar Jindal. The finances of the society are improving. The Shokrollahi, Alon Orlitsky, Sergio Verdú, Michael Gastpar, major updates since the last BoG meeting are: investment and Andrea Goldsmith. Five more will be chosen each year.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 9

Each Distinguished Lecturer will serve for two years, so The NAC has received requests for the members of the Fellow that in steady state there will always be 10 lecturers. Committee to be announced sooner, because the deadline for Fellow nominations and recommendations is March 1, and Chapters desiring to invite a Distinguished Lecturer must Fellows Committee members cannot act as nominators or submit a proposal indicating the benefit to the chapter. The references. The Fellows Committee for 2010 will be: Michelle proposals will be evaluated by the MCC, and if approved Effros, Michael Honig, Hideki Imai, Rolf Johannesson, will be forwarded to the Distinguished Lecturer. The value Marcelo Weinberger, and Frans Willems (chair). of the program will be assessed via feedback from both the chapters and the Distinguished Lecturer. The chapters will The Shannon Award Committee consists of: Frank be asked to post the slides on the Society web site, and if Kschischang (chair), Giuseppe Caire (1VP), Muriel Médard possible, the video of the lecture as well. (2VP), Imre Csiszàr (continuing), Abbas El Gamal (new), Robert Gallager (new), and Robert Gray (continuing). The Regarding membership development: in the last few years, Bylaws say that this committee must include the President, a half-year free membership has been offered with ISIT reg- 1VP and 2VP ex-officio, one past Editor-in-Chief, and three istration. 283 registrants in 2008 and 169 in 2009 have taken previous winners of the Shannon Award. advantage of this initiative. The implementation of this initiative has not always been easy. An alternative approach The Wyner Award Committee consists of: Frank Kschischang would be to offer a different price for IEEE members who (chair), Giuseppe Caire (1VP) Andrea Goldsmith (JPP), Dick are IT members than for IEEE members who are not Society Blahut (new), and Jack Wolf (new). The NAC recommended members. There were comments indicating that this is that the Bylaws be changed to require only two officers already a policy of the Society, but it has not been widely (President and Junior Past President) and two past Wyner implemented. It was suggested that perhaps we could do Award winners. both, because the two initiatives serve different purposes: one of them is a recruitment tool, and the other is a member The Awards Committee will consist of: Giuseppe Caire benefit. It was suggested that we could set the price differ- (chair), Muriel Médard (2VP), Alexander Barg (new), Max ential at exactly the value of the half-year membership. Costa (new), Elza Erkip (new), Hans-Andrea Loeliger (new), Another option would be to make the Tuesday luncheon Ueli Maurer (continuing), Li Ping (new), Hirosuke Yamamoto free for IT members but not for general IEEE members, but (new), En-hui Yang (continuing), and Ram Zamir (continu- it was concluded that may be too complicated to administer. ing). The NAC recommended that the Bylaws be changed to IEEE is considering the possibility of giving one free Society require two BoG members (in addition to the two officers) membership with IEEE membership; we need to track this on the Awards Committee. proposal. The President moved that we continue the first approach and start the second one, and evaluate the results The BoG unanimously approved all of the NAC recommen- of both. The motion carried unanimously. dations.

5) The Outreach Committee report was presented by Muriel 7) The Fellows Committee report was presented by Daniel Médard for Todd Coleman. Last year the society had a Costello. Last year 14 nominations were received, and robust outreach program. The mentor/mentee program was 7 people were ultimately elected to the rank of Fellow. This expanded, with a breakfast at ISIT. Another initiative is success ratio was higher than the historical norm of around Women in the Information Theory Society (WithITS). Todd 40%. This year, the IEEE has instituted an all-electronic Coleman has agreed to lead the administration of the men- nomination format. There is an option for any Fellow to be torship program, and Christina Fragouli to lead the WithITS. asked to provide a comment or evaluation for a candidate. Growth directions for these initiatives were discussed. Andrea Goldsmith asked if we want to make this a standing 8) The Online Committee report was presented by Anand committee. David Forney mentioned that the Bylaws will Sarwate for Nick Laneman. The web site is working well. come up for discussion in the Allerton meeting and that The next objective is to increase the content and utilize the would be a good time to discuss whether this should web site to its full potential. Work is in progress to put com- become a standing committee. The BoG thanked Muriel pressed videos of the ISIT Shannon Lectures and plenary Médard for her efforts on the Outreach Committee. lectures on the web site. Another goal is to integrate the conference web sites with the society web site. Suggestions 6) The Nomination and Appointments Committee (NAC) were made to incorporate ISIT tutorials into the web page, report was presented by the Senior Past President, David and also better to integrate the material that is published in Forney. The majority of the committee’s work is done in our Newsletter and highlight it on our web page. Another January, and David Forney praised the hard work of the suggestion was to link out-of-print or hard-to-find informa- committee members. There are a mix of ways of staffing our tion theory texts to the web site. committees. Four committees must be staffed in January: the Fellows, Shannon, Wyner and Awards Committees. It is The BoG thanked the Online Committee for a great job desirable that every BoG member has a committee assign- done during the last year. ment or other substantial task to do. The Past President, Andrea Goldsmith, took a survey of BoG members, and 9) The Student Committee report was presented by Gerhard many BoG members have been assigned to committees on Kramer. He gave an update on the Third Summer School on this basis. It was recommended that this process continue. Information Theory, August 5–8, 2010. Applications are due

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 10

April 15, registrations June 1. The Summer School will have suggested to use it for a winter school of information theory a new format, with six two-hour lectures during the first in Cairo. However, the BoG encouraged ITW Cairo to close three days. The school Has been registered with IEEE as a the books and do the winter school proposal separately. conference, with ITSoc as the sponsor. Already $10K has been approved from the Society to be provided to the For ITW 2010 Dublin, the hotel contract has been finalized. Summer School in 2010. The dorm contract has been sub- A motion was made to approve the budget for ITW Dublin, mitted to the IEEE for review. Five potential instructors have and the motion was carried unanimously. been contacted. Jack Wolf will be the Padovani Lecturer. There will be efforts to encourage participation from local Max Costa made a presentation for the proposed ITW at residents and from Mexico. With regard to fundraising: Paraty, Brazil. The topics include coding, cryptography, $58K was raised last year, including $10K from ITSoc, $10K compressed sensing, and related areas. The local attractions from NSF, and the remaining from other sources. The com- as well as the budget were presented. A BoG member made mittee requests that the society provide an additional $10K a comparison with the ITW 2006 in Punta del Este, which this year to reach the same level as last year ($20K). This was also remote and very successful, but in contrast it was request was approved by the BoG unanimously. much cheaper. It was mentioned that Punta del Este is much more accessible than Paraty, and there was concern about 10) The Publications Committee report was represented by Frank the accessibility of the location. After extensive discussions, Kschischang for the Editor-in-Chief, Ezio Biglieri. There was a motion for the workshop and its budget were approved by no report. A motion was made to appoint James Massey to majority vote of BoG. replace John Anderson as the Book Review Editor. A proposal was made for technical co-sponsorship of There was a report by Alex Grant on migration to Allerton 2010 (jointly with the IEEE Control Society). This ScholarOne. The ScholarOne web site has gone active and is proposal was approved by the BoG. A proposal was made being tested by Alex Grant, Adriaan van Wijngaarden, Ezio for technical co-sponsorship of SIBIRCON 2010. A discus- Biglieri and Helmut Bölcskei. Helmut Bölcskei is the desig- sion ensued about the quality of the conference, its accep- nate for the next Editor-in-Chief, to be formally approved at tance rates, and the relationship of the conference to the core the BoG Annual Meeting. It is expected that ScholarOne area of ITSoc. The motion for technical sponsorship of will streamline the work of the Associate Editors. In the SIBIRCON 2010 did not pass. officers meeting, held a day earlier, the possibility of hiring a staff person was raised, but this will be up to the incom- The Conference Committee presented recommendations ing Editor-in-Chief. Helmut Bölcskei is in the process of regarding the purpose and accessibility of workshops. In putting together a manifesto with regard to the outstanding particular, workshop proposers and organizers are encour- issues that need to be addressed with our Transactions. aged to put together workshops that complement, not mimic, the ISITs. It was mentioned that the Society does not 11) The Conference Committee report was presented by the have enough workshops in no-frills, accessible venues that chair, Bruce Hajek. For ISIT Seoul, a surplus of about $64K are inexpensive enough that allow for good student partici- is expected. For ISIT 2010 (Austin) everything seems to be pation. David Forney commented that in the past, it was a on track. For ISIT 2011 (St Petersburg), the date will be the tradition that there were two types of workshops per year: first week of August 2011. The web site is up, and the final one of them of the outreach type, and one of them more budget is in preparation. It was mentioned that at the same accessible. In the recent past, however, most of the work- time as ISIT 2010, the SIAM discrete math biannual meeting shops have been of the exotic type. Various issues related to will be taking place in Austin, and it was suggested to organizing workshops were extensively discussed. explore an agreement with SIAM for mutual admission of the attendees of the two conferences. 12) Muriel Médard commented on behalf of herself and Dick Blahut that we need to do more to make IT and its contribu- ISIT 2012 Cambridge/MIT is on track. An update will be tion to daily life more visible to the general population, as given at the next BoG meeting. well as to key decision makers. It was suggested that from some angles our society is perceived as unfriendly and ISIT 2013, to be held in Turkey, has been preliminarily unapproachable. On the other hand, many of our initiatives, approved. The loan requested by ISIT 2013 is 125,000 euros. including the Summer School, are designed to bring people Questions were asked about the schedule of the loan. A into our area. motion for the location of ISIT 2013 (Turkey) and for grant- ing the loan for ISIT 2013 were approved by the BoG. 13) David Forney suggested to put in place a liaison to the Signal Processing Society. The President undertook to con- Interest has been expressed for ISIT 2014 in the San Francisco sider this suggestion and, after discussion with the officers, Bay area and Hawaii. For 2015, interest has been expressed for to recommend a person for an SPS liaison. China or Hong Kong by Raymond Yeung and Pingzhi Fan. 14) Muriel Médard mentioned the Green Touch initiative ITW Volos 2009 anticipates a $2.5K surplus. The Conference (greentouch.org), which could be of interest to our general Committee is awaiting the final report from the Taormina and membership. Cairo ITWs. In Cairo there were 207 participants. ITW Cairo had approximately $10K surplus, and Hesham El Gamal has 15) The meeting was adjourned at 16:45 hours.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 11 Event Report: Broadcast Channel Summit The Chinese University of Hong Kong, March 7–14

Recently there has been a spurt of activity on the discrete Hong Kong, lectures provided by the participants in the first two memoryless broadcast channel problem, notable successes be- days outlined most of the classical and recent results. (The videos ing strictly better outer bounds; a new cardinality bounding and slides of the lectures can be downloaded at http://www.inc. technique that makes the evaluation of Marton’s inner bound cuhk.edu.hk/event.html) feasible; the demonstration of a gap between the best known inner and outer bounds for the binary skew- symmetric broadcast channel; use of indirect decoding to strictly improve achievable regions for three or more receivers; and the determination of the capacity region for certain classes of BISO channels. A small workshop, with generous support from the In- stitute of Network Coding (http:// www.inc.cuhk.edu.hk) and the Insti- tute of Theoretical Computer Science and Communication (http://www. itcsc.cuhk.edu.hk) was arranged to bring together some researchers who have been very active in this area recently. Prof. Venkat Anantharam (UC Berkeley), Amin Aminzadeh Gohari A. Gohari, V. Anantharam, R. Yeung, A. El Gamal, P. Moulin at the Repulse Bay (UC Berkeley), Prof. Abbas El Gamal beach (Stanford), and Prof. Young-Han Kim (UCSD) joined locals Prof. Chandra Nair, Vincent Wang, and Yanlin Geng for this week-long workshop at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The idea was to make sense of these recent developments in the discrete memoryless broadcast channel problem and to share insights and intu- ition. The air was full of suspense: can one improve on Marton’s inner bound or is this the true capacity region?; can one establish optimality of the current outer bound or can we strictly improve it? None of these fun questions was resolved during the workshop, thus not depriving others of this wonderful ‘pursuit of happyness’, but the participants went away better equipped in their attempts to reach the summit. Y-H Kim and C. Nair on Dragon’s Back trail The technical discussions centered around the key developments that have taken place in the pre- A hike along Dragon’s Back trail that offered glorious views of the ceding three years. (For those interested, a monograph on these eastern coastline of Hong Kong Island, trips to Victoria Peak and developments is under preparation and may be forthcoming in Stanley Market, and savoring some of the local culinary delights the coming months.) For the larger audience in the universities in provided welcome respite during the week-long event.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 12 First IEEE African Winter School on Information Theory and Communications Mopani Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 1-4 June 2010 Reolyn Heymann

The first IEEE African Winter School on Information Theory and students on how to start and successfully manage a career as an Communications was held from 1–4 June 2010, at Mopani Camp in academic. This session was presented by Willem Clarke from the the Kruger National Park, South Africa. The winter school was ini- University of Johannesburg. tiated by Han Vinck from the University of Duisburg-Essen, who also established the European Winter School on Coding and In- Post-graduate students also had the opportunity to present their formation Theory. The Telecommunications Research Group from ongoing research during the regular paper presentations, and re- the University of Johannesburg hosted the event with Hendrik ceived valuable feedback from the experienced and distinguished Ferreira as general chair and Han Vinck as technical chair. researchers. The winter school was attended by 45 participants, of which 24 were postgraduate students. Participants represented The winter school started off with a welcoming function on the 15 universities and 9 different countries, including the African deck of the Mopani conference centre and attendees were enter- countries of South Africa, Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Zambia and tained by local traditional tribal dancers. The technical programme Swaziland. was scheduled in such a way as to allow attendees to participate in morning, sunset and evening game drives. The banquet was in Immediately after the winter school, the organisers also hosted the form of a boma braai. Tables were set outside and participants the IEEE Region 8 Chapter Chair Conference and Leadership could enjoy each others’ company under the starry night. Joint Workshop.

Since the winter school included participants from both the fields I would like to thank my colleagues for all their help and dedi- of Information Theory and Communications, it was important to cation while organising the event: Hendrik Ferreira, Han Vinck, have tutorials on a wide range of topics. There were five invited Theo Swart, Monya Badenhorst and Khmaies Ouahada. On behalf tutorial sessions, presented by Vijay Barghava from the University of the organising committee and all the attendees, a special word of British Columbia (Multigigabit Wireless Multimedia Commu- of gratitude towards the IEEE Information Theory Society, the nications: Future and Core Technologies), Claude Carlet from the University of Johannesburg, the Shannon Foundation, the IEEE Universit Paris 8 (Highly Nonlinear Filter Boolean Functions with Region 8 committee and the IEEE Region 8 Chapter Coordination High Algebraic Immunity for Stream Ciphers), Amin Shokrollahi Subcommitee for their financial support. from EPFL (The Development of Raptor Codes), Han Vinck from the University of Duisburg-Essen (Concepts in Information Theo- For more information about the winter school, please visit our ry and Coding Techniques) and Jos Weber from the Delft Universi- website: www.awsitc.info. The lecture slides are available, as well ty of Technology (Energy-Efficient Communications via Network as the proceedings. The next winter school is planned to be held in Coding). A special session was dedicated to advising doctoral Cairo and will be hosted by the Nile University.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 13 2010 International Symposium on Network Coding (NetCod 2010) The Hart House, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, June 9–11, 2010

Since 2005, NetCod has been a very successful series of work- 48 researchers from both academia and industry have attended for shops providing an International forum for the presentation and the event, including the chairs and keynote speakers. discussion of new research and ideas on network coding, rang- ing from theoretical results to practical applications. Network The technical sessions of the conference were very well at- coding research has expanded its scope, and continues to be an tended. There were a great number of questions being asked active research field in the information theory and networking during the plenary technical sessions, and a great deal of dis- communities. It has been the tradition of past NetCod workshops cussions in between sessions and after the sessions conclude to represent inter-disciplinary and focused research, with an emphasis on innovation.

The Technical Program of NetCod 2010 includes 21 technical papers in its Pro- ceedings, which have been selected by an expert Technical Program Committee from a total of 38 paper submissions. It spans eight technical sessions from June 9 to June 11, and covers a wide range of research topics. In addition to more traditional network coding topics such as network code construction, the scope of NetCod 2010 has included high-quality work in some recently active research directions, including security issues involving network coding, as well as the application of network coding in wireless networks, peer-to-peer networks, and distributed storage systems. As a result, some of the technical sessions reflect these research directions, such as “Security with Network Coding,” “Network Coding in Practical Networks,” and “Applications of Network Coding.” NetCod 2010 sessions have covered the June 9: Professor Babak Hassibi — “Optimal Network Coding for Small Alphabet complete spectrum of network coding re- Sizes” search, from theory to practice.

Much effort by the Technical Program Committee has gone into putting together the high-quality technical program that we included in NetCod 2010. The quality and quantity of submissions were both strong. The program committee has had a difficult task to select the papers among many high-quality deserving paper submissions. Similar to NetCod workshops in previous years, the reviewing process has been completed within a very short period of time, in order to include the latest results in the area of network coding research.

NetCod 2010 has invited three plenary keynote speakers, Pro- fessor Babak Hassibi from California Institute of Technology, Professor Christina Fragouli from EPFL, and Professor Alex Dimakis from University of Southern California, to offer three plenary talks, one in each day of the conference. The topics of their talks were as follows:

During these plenary talks, the keynote speakers have enlighten the audience with their own perspectives on the future of network June 10: Professor Christina Fragouli — “Network Coding: coding research. Beyond Throughput Benefits”

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 14

every day. All the attendees have enjoyed the quality of the keynote talks and technical sessions, as well as the live discussions in the conference.

In summary, building on the successes of previous NetCod workshops, NetCod 2010, technically sponsored by the IEEE Information Theory Society, and financially sponsored by MI- TACS Inc., has successfully continued its tradition to bring together researchers and practitioners working in this area to discuss recent and innovative results, and to identify future directions and challenges in developing breakthrough theoretical results and real-world practical applications with network coding.

Baochun Li and Frank Kschischang, NetCod 2010 Co-chairs Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto June 9–11, 2010

June 11: Professor Alex Dimakis — “Network Coding for Distributed Storage”

Sponsors CTW 2011 The workshop will be held near the beautiful beach at Sitges, Catalonia, Spain, the city well known for its Film Festival and Carnival. As always, the workshop will be single track with five technical sessions, three plenary speakers, five panel discussions, and two open poster sessions. The workshop will be followed by the well celebrated The Night of Saint John the Baptist in Barcelona!

http://www.ieee-ctw.org

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 15

Technical Program Committee B. Hajek S. Litsyn B. Ryabko The 2011 International Symposium on Information Theory (co-chairs) will take place July 31 August 5, in Saint Petersburg, K. Abdel-Ghaffar Russia, the Northern capital of the Russian Federation. A. Ashikhmin A. Barg Previously unpublished contributions from a broad range of J. Boutros topics in information theory are solicited, including (but not D. Burshtein limited to) the following areas: N. Cai R. Calderbank A. Chaintreau G. Cohen Coding theory and practice Communication theory S. Diggavi Compression Cryptography and data security I. Dumer Detection and estimation Information theory and statistics A. Dyachkov H. El Gamal Network communication theory Multiple terminal information theory A. El Gamal Pattern recognition and learning Quantum information theory U. Erez Sequences and complexity Shannon theory E. Erkip A. Eryilmaz Signal processing Source coding T. Etzion A. Fionov C. Fragouli M. Gastpar Researchers working in emerging fields of information L. Györfi theory or on novel applications of information theory are M. Haenggi especially encouraged to submit original findings. Submitted S. Hanly B. Hassibi papers should be of sufficient depth for review by experts in T. Ho the field. Final papers will be limited to 5 pages in standard S. Jafar IEEE conference format. The paper submission deadline is J. Jedwab N. Jindal February 10, 2011, at midnight, Eastern Time (New York, I. Kontoyiannis USA). The deadline is firm and no extensions will be granted. F. Kschischang Notification of acceptance by May 1, 2011. Detailed H.-A. Loeliger O. Milenkovic information on paper submission, technical program, U. Mitra tutorials, travel, social programs, and travel grants will be A. Montanari announced on the ISIT 2011 website: www.isit2011.org. C. Nair P. Narayan R. Nowak Alexander Kuleshov Vladimir Blinovsky Anthony Ephremides A. Orlitsky IITP, Bolshoy Karetny, 19, IITP, Bolshoy Karetny, 19, University of Maryland, USA D. Palomar S. Pradhan Moscow, 127994, Russia Moscow, 127994, Russia College Park, MD 20742 M. Raginsky +7 (495) 650-42-25 +7 (926) 831-95-97 +1 (301) 405-3641 N. Rahnavard [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] K. Ramchandran R. Roth P. Sadeghi S. Sanghavi A. Sayeed G. Seroussi D. Shah S. Shamai P. Siegel M. Skoglund P. Solé E. Soljanin W. Szpankowski I. Tabus E. Telatar D. Tuninetti R. Urbanke U. Vaccaro M. Varanasi B. Vasi P. Viswanath E. Viterbo P. Vontobel T. Weissman R. Yeung G. Zémor Q. Zhao L. Zheng

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010 September 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 16 Conference Calendar DATE CONFERENCE LOCATION WEB PAGE DUE DATE

August 30– 2010 IEEE Information Theory Workshop Dublin, http://www.shannon Passed September 3, 2010 (ITW 2010) Ireland institute.ie/itw2010/

September 06–10, 6th International Symposium on Turbo Brest, France http://conferences.telecom- Passed 2010 Codes & Iterative Information Processing bretagne.eu/turbocodes/

September 13–14, 3rd International Workshop on Multiple Barcelona, http://www.csit-spb.ru/ Passed 2010 Access Communications Spain macom2010.html

September 29– 48th Annual Allerton Conference on Monticello, http://cslgreenhouse.csl.illinois. Passed October 01, 2010 Communications, Control, and Computing Illinois, USA edu/allerton/

October 17–20, 2010 International Symposium on Taichung, http://isita2010.cm.nctu.edu.tw/ Passed 2010 Information Theory and its Applications Taiwan and the 2010 International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications (ISITA 2010 and ISSSTA 2010)

October 25–27, 24th IEEE Annual Computer Lake Arrowhead, http://committees.comsoc.org/ Passed 2010 Communications Workshop (CCW2010) CA, USA tccc/ccw/2010/

November 7–10, The Asilomar Conference on Signals, Pacific Grove, http://www.asilomarssc.org/ Passed 2010 Systems, and Computers (Asilomar 2010) CA, USA

December 6–10, 2010 IEEE Global Communications Miami, Florida, http://www.ieee-globecom.org/ Passed 2010 Conference (GLOBECOM 2010) USA

March 23-25, 45th Annual Conference on Information Baltimore, http://ciss.jhu.edu January 5, 2011 2011 Sciences and Systems (CISS 2011) Maryland

April 10–15, 2011 IEEE INFOCOM 2011 Shanghai, China http://www.ieee-infocom.org/ Passed

May 9–13, 2011 WiOpt 2011 Princeton, http://www.wiopt.org December 23, 2010 New Jersey, USA

May 14–17, 2011 2011 IEEE Vehicular Technology Budapest, http://www.ieeevtc.org/ September 30, 2010 Conference (VTC2011-Spring) Hungary vtc2011spring/

June 5–9, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Kyoto, Japan http://www.ieee-icc.org/ September 7, 2010 Communications (ICC 2011)

June 20–22, 2011 2011 IEEE Communication Sitges, Catalonia, http://www.ieee-ctw.org Theory Workshop Spain

July 31– 2011 IEEE International Symposium on St Petersburg, http://www.isit2011.info February 10, 2011 August 05, 2011 Information Theory (ISIT 2011) Russia

October 16–20, 2011 IEEE Information Theory Paraty, Brazil http://www.fee.unicamp.br/ April 10, 2011 2011 Workshop (ITW 2011) pitw2011/

Major COMSOC conferences: http://www.comsoc.org/confs/index.html IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter September 2010